Psychoanalytic Theories
According to Sigmund Freud, he believed that the unconscious mind comprises of all the mental processes that are inaccessible to a person’s mind i.e. one’s consciousness but these processes influence a person’s judgment, feelings, and his or her behavior. Freud believed that the unconscious mind determines human behavior. The unconscious mind contains all the significant and disturbing material that a person needs to store away from his or her conscious mind because these memories have disastrous effects. They include past experiences that were tragic such as painful loss of a loved one. These events are too frightening for the patient to acknowledge and therefore, such information is locked away in the unconscious mind. In addition, he felt that the influences of the unconscious mind reveal themselves in various ways such when one is dreaming (Colman, 2006).On the other hand, Jung had a different perspective of the unconscious mind.
He believed that the unconscious mind was a storehouse for repressed memories, which are specific to an individual and one’s ancestral past. He also believed that the unconscious mind played a key role in a person’s personality. However, in his case he believed that the unconscious mind was made up of two layers (McLeod, 2007). The first layer is the personal unconscious, which contains all the temporary forgotten information and repressed memories. He emphasized more on the present and the future and disregarded childhood memories in the analysis of the neurosis and its treatment. Looking at the case of Ana O, one can see that her condition was triggered by her father’s illness. It was as if he could not bear to see his father suffering because of the disease. She exhibited both physical and mental symptoms in relation to her condition. The father’s illness acted as a trigger to Anna to begin experiencing physical and mental difficulties. However, one is inclined to use Jung’s explanation and analysis of the unconscious mind, in order to explain the condition of Ana. Her present feelings were the determinants of her mental state (Snowden, 2010). The feelings were also concentrated on a single concept i.e. she did not want her father to die. However, her inability to ensure that her father did not die, led her to become stressed and it had an overall negative effect on her.The two theorists believed that the unconscious mind played a critical role in one’s life. In addition, they believed that the unconscious mind contains all sorts of both significant and disturbing materials that people usually store or keep out of their awareness (Schultz, 2008).
The reason for this is that such information will become too threatening for a person if they acknowledge them fully. In this case, the feeling of the loss of her dad made Anna O develop both physical and mental symptoms that were detrimental to her health.They also agreed that, although the unconscious mind contains information that people do not want to experience or re-live, these memories or …
